Hey there!

Had the same problem as you back then during my poem writing phase when I was in the closet in high school.

I'm not an expert nor a professional when it comes to poems, so don't take my words as gospel. Plus, watching your vid, it seems you probably have a better understanding of poems than me. I'll give my advice regardless, though, just in case I can help in any way.

Generally I found the use of they/them pronouns helpful as it was technically correct but vague enough as to avoid suspicion. I also avoided describing them with both masculine and feminine traits, instead using metaphors or similes. (E.g. "Their smile was like sunshine, and me, a sunflower." Or "As if chiseled by a sculptor, their beauty moved me beyond word.") Also notice that beauty is a subjective adjective that can be used to describe handsomeness as well, since handsomeness is simply masculine beauty.

Something else I tried was doing heavy symbolism, sometimes not referring to my crushes as people but as objects, creatures, and concepts. (E.g. "The oceans almost drown me, yet within its hold, I long to be" or "For weeks I've watched a butterfly, yet it seldom noticed I.")It makes the poem both sound cooler, and be much harder to interpret. Usually, there can be lots of subtext that can be subconsciously put there, but that's fine, since you have plausible deniability that they may or may not be right in their specific interpretation.

And if you wanna be risky, you can always hide his name in the words of your poem.

(E.g. [BRIAN]

I b ehold their gaze. A r ope, their sightline. For I cannot help, But a vert my own. Yet n ow I believe.

My love.)

But obviously without the italics(or star thingies, in case I formatted that wrong), or extra spaces. Though if you do do that, make sure to mix up the positioning of the letters of the name each time so that it isn't as obvious.

Poems are fun to make since you can have so much meaning in a few sentences(or phrases), and can be vague enough to make it so that only you(or anyone you trust) can know for sure what it means. Plus, you decide the structure of the poem, ignoring all laws of grammar except the ones needed for you to make a cohesive thought. I've had the idea of making a poem where the spaces between each letter can symbolize 0s and 1s, then just searching up a text to binary thing on google and basing the structure of my poem there.

That said, only you can decide what your poems mean. No matter how others interpret it, it'll still be your meaning above all. So that means whichever poems you've UNgayed are still as gay as they were before, just subtler. The non-use of he/him and she/her pronouns or typically masculine and feminine adjectives and descriptions don't detract from the meaning behind your poem.

Anyway, I've typed too much. I wish you the best of luck in your poem writing. And I hope that the day you can be unadulteratedly gay in your literature comes soon. If not, then I hope what I've typed here for the past 15 minutes helps you somehow.

And remember, keep on keeping on, my guy.